Several readers have recently inquired as to whether information in their Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) accounts was also compromised as a result of the hacking of personal data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

At a recent meeting of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Executive Director Gregory Long addressed the two recent OPM data breaches. At the meeting, he stated that TSP account numbers are never shared with OPM. This means that the TSP data was not affected by the two breaches.

He also provided information about the steps the Agency has taken to continue to protect TSP account information in light of the breaches, including redesigning knowledge-based questions used to authenticate participants, offering the option of putting an administrative hold on a concerned participant’s TSP account, and continuing to rigorously examine the Agency’s cybersecurity posture and practices.

About the Author

Ralph Smith has several decades of experience working with federal human resources issues. He has written extensively on a full range of human resources topics in books and newsletters and is a co-founder of two companies and several newsletters on federal human resources. Follow Ralph on Twitter: @RalphSmith47